The complete removal of shallow puddles of rain water that frequently accumulate on non-porous and semi-porous covers and tarps is often a difficult task. This task commonly arises in connection with swimming pool covers, boat covers, pickup truck covers, tarps, and other instances in which a non-porous covering is used to protect structures, vehicles, vessels, and/or equipment that are exposed to the elements.
Accumulations of rain water on such non-porous and semi-porous coverings adds weight, which makes it more difficult to remove the covering from the protected structure, vehicle, vessel or equipment. Since puddled rain water also commonly contains debris, such as fallen leaves, dead insects and dirt, the removal of a puddle-laden covering will usually cause dirty water to fall into or upon the protected structure, vehicle, vessel or equipment.
For example, after a rainstorm, water and debris will collect on a swimming pool cover. While a pool cover pump or siphon can remove much of the water, a shallow residual puddle containing saturated debris will always remain. Such residual puddles are unsightly and can contaminate the swimming pool water by leaking through the cover or falling into the pool when the cover is removed.
The problem of extracting shallow accumulations of liquid has been addressed in the prior art by pumping apparatus, an example of which is the U.S. patent application of Reardon (Pub. No. US 2008/0190838). As a pump reaches the bottom of a puddle, however, its inlets tend to become clogged with debris, so that a shallow liquid residual remains. The same short-coming limits the efficacy of siphoning devices, such as the pool cover cleaner taught by the patent to Ryall (U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,540).
The patent to Brouillard (U.S. Pat. No. 6,209,729) discloses a scoop for manually bailing water. But the handle of the Brouillard scoop is in line with the opening of the scoop, so that the scoop must be moved in a shovel-like fashion. While a shoveling movement can be effective in scooping solid materials, such as soil, it is not optimal for liquids, which will tend to flow around the scoop rather than into the scoop opening.
To be effective in bailing very shallow water, a scoop-type device must be designed so that the lower rim of its receptacle opening can reach below the puddle surface, in order that the liquid will flow into the opening of its own accord—“seeking its own level,” so to speak. The liquid then can be captured in the receptacle by a slow sideways motion of the scoop, so that the inertia of the fluid tends to carry it into the receptacle opening. A similar lateral movement is employed in connection with netted pool skimmers, such as those described in the patents to Ruhling (U.S. Pat. No. 3,220,037) and Petrik (U.S. Pat. No. 3,368,686). In order to facilitate this lateral motion, the handles on the Ruhling and Petrik skimmers are oriented transversely to the skimmer openings. A similar transverse handle orientation is also taught by Mason (U.S. Pat. No. 5,988,715), as applied to a scoop device for cleaning residential storm drain gutters.
The problem addressed by the Mason patent is different from that of the present invention in one important aspect—in a storm gutter a rigid trough already exists to localize the accumulated water and debris. In the case of a fitted pool, truck or boat cover, on the other hand, the surface is flat, which causes the liquid to spread out. Therefore, an effective bailing device for these applications must be capable of impressing a trough into the otherwise flat surface of the cover or tarp.